The puppy and the bear playground: October 2011

Last September we managed to escape (again !) to Vietnam, along with our friends Reni and Grace. After one and a half year planning, well actually it started with 13 people on board, then each of them cancelled, so in the end - there was 4 of us.

The journey started from Jakarta - Singapore. We were supposed to meet Grace there, but none of us realized, that we would arrived in Singapore at lunch time.... and puppy was the only one carrying Singapore dollars. Reni had late breakfast before leaving Soetta... but puppy and bear didn't. And because we flew with Tiger - we needed to go out and go to Terminal 2, because puppy thought the budget terminal was not a great place to spend 3 hours waiting for the next flight. Thanks God after going here and there, we found Burger King... in Terminal 2. By the way - there is transfer bus from Terminal 3 (budget terminal) to terminal 2. And from Terminal 2 to terminal 1, you will need a sky train.

*) later we found out that there is also Burger King in terminal 3, if we only cared about walking another 200-300 meters from the bus stop :P

We met Grace, and so off we go.

We arrived in Hanoi late at night. We were quite shocked that to enter Vietnam, you don't need to fill in the immigration form cards.. *and there was no sign of course...* Immigration was quite fast, unlike Bangkok, then before meeting the guy from the hotel, we exchanged some money. Good thing is, the rate for VND compared to USD was higher than what we thought - it was 20,000 VND for 1 USD. Puppy and bear exchanged USD 100 each, and we instantly became millionaire :)

We arrived at the hotel late... and Hanoi in weekdays night at 10 pm, the city was already empty...*or so we thought*. We could only find one restaurant - please note that we are staying in the old quarter - a bit like the old town in Central Jakarta, hence it was a bit shabby. Not luxurious. First night, we all decided to take it easy, because the next day we had to leave for Halong Bay :)

Just a glimpse on Halong Bay - we will definitely have another post on Halong Bay *clue : we did stupid things here*